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Monday, March 23rd, 2009

A childhood fear of mine

I remember when I found out that the earth was rotating a hundreds of miles per hour... and worse yet, that the earth was orbiting the sun at THOUSANDS of miles per hour. I was in an earth science class in grade school.

Days later, after pondering these disturbing facts, I began to secretly wonder what would happen if the earth suddenly just STOPPED. I used to fear that I, and everything else on earth, would be flung off into space suddenly. This was a very real, albeit small, fear for me. More like a "concern". Mild anxiety at best.

Sure, I'd get focused on other things, get distracted, eat a sandwich, forget about the fact that I was hurtling through space at THOUSANDS of miles per hour. But then I'd see something that reminded me of momentum, or centrifugal force, or spheres, or spinning, or stopping, and that mental image of everything being flung off the earth's surface would return.

I got over it, eventually. Turns out there are better things to think about.

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The circumference of the Earth at the equator is 25,000 miles. The Earth rotates in about 24 hours. Therefore, if you were to hang above the surface of the Earth at the equator without moving, you would see 25,000 miles pass by in 24 hours, at a speed of 25000/24 or just over 1000 miles per hour.

Multiply by cosine of your latitude to see how fast the Earth is rotating where you are.

Earth is also moving around the Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour.

Posted By John Common at: 12:03 am

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Monday, March 23rd, 2009

A childhood fear of mine

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